Silence is golden. Crossed fingers are superstition. No news is good news or is ignorance bliss?

Posted on by Opher

Who knows what is going on?

Will we find out soon?

Suspense is difficult.Mandi and the mean mandolin

23 thoughts on “Silence is golden. Crossed fingers are superstition. No news is good news or is ignorance bliss?”

    1. Well you can lead a horse to water!
      Except the endless touch of a child who could never be broken…
      Let’s hope.
      Looks like Monday to me!!

  2. Not a word could be heard, or be spoken…….

    I’ve heard nothing via the Stormcock community, and nowt on Roy’s FB pages and website.
    I assume the decision will be posted on the CPS website. Nothing there so far, and it looks to be about a week out of date on its ‘News’ section

  4. I assumed this bizarre affair had sunk without trace, so I was shocked to here that there had been charges and a trial. Trials don’t exist in a vacuum and the current political climate is one where for a variety of reasons, the 60’s is on trial as much as the individuals involved. Times change and so do what people, society, the state, consider criminal behaviour.

    Allegations about sexcrimes are incredibly damaging for the accused, especially historic sexcrimes. How on earth does one defend oneself against allegations about events that occured decades ago? If the accusor had made these allegations at the time and gone to the police, or told other people that she’d been molested, it would be different, but to wait forty years is a long time. How can there be any evidence or physical proof that any crime took place after forty years? So one is left with unsubstantiated allegations, one person’s word against anothers, one person’s memories against another’s.

    Harper is being accused of dreadful crimes without a shred of evidence being presented and the consequences of charges and a trial are so serious that one is ‘found guilty’ and ‘punished’ even if one is found not guilty.

    What’s disturbing is that the CPS knows that a retrial is yet another form of ‘punishment’ regardless of the outcome, not least the colossal cost of defending oneself, so there is a temptation to ‘cut one’s loses’ and make a deal with the CPS and agree to a plea bargain where one admits a lesser offence rather than go through the expense and pressure of another trial. The CPS are happy because they get a conviction and show that they haven’t wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money on a trial that should never have taken place in the first place and they show that these historic sexcrime cases are valid and worth pursuing.

    Let’s hope that Roy Harper doesn’t agree to a bargain in order to get it over with and begin to rebuild his reputation and life, what’s left of it after it’s been smashed to pieces like this, in a process that resembles a bloodthirsty ritual which demands a sacrifice.

    1. I quite agree. There are worrying aspects to all this. We’ve seen many times now. We’ll see how it pans out.
      Thanks for your comments.
      Best wishes
      Opher

  5. My wife was shocked too when I told her that Roy Harper had actually been on trial for alleged offences that occurred decades ago. She rolled her eyes and thought it was ridiculous. One would think he was some Nazi concentration camp guard pursued down the decades for unspeakable crimes against humanity!

    She said that it sounded like a witch-trial, or a witch-hunt, when one thinks about it, it does resemble something like that, which is a scary thought. How did we, as a society, get here?

    I’m actually wary of mentioning my own sexual encounters which began when I thirteen with girls of fifteen who seemed, at the time, years older than me and very sophisticated indeed. But I we were discreet, though today, heaven knows what would happen to us?

    I keep thinking about Roy Harper and there but for the grace of God, go I. The whole idea that young people, also known as ‘children’, don’t have sex before the age of sixteen… is absurd. People seem to have sex when they want to. It’s bizarre that physically young people are maturing earlier and earlier, yet the age of consent is still kept at sixteen. In many cultures the age is lower, when girls begin to bleed they leave childhood behind and are ready for marriage, and this isn’t just in ‘tribes living in the jungle’, the age of consent in several European countries is fourteen and fifteen.

    I used to know a girl, let’s call her Becky, she was the daughter of a Jewish Rabbi, she rolled the most wonderful and perfect joints imaginable. I still remember her sitting crossed-legged on top of a grand piano, wearing an almost see-through silk dress, at a party in a big, big, house outside Henley with a garden that went down to the Thames. She said she was fifteen, but today I’m not sure about that. I used to know so many wild, wonderful and beautiful girls. They lived an almost secret life that there parents knew nothing about, or perhaps they chose not to know?

    The point is we seem to be entering a new age of puritanism where there’s a clampdown on all sorts of behaviour, not least in relation to language and the words we are allowed to use and the thoughts we are allowed to have.

    But that outline of my ‘wild’ youth isn’t meant to justify sexual abuse or rape as an acceptable form of behaviour. It’s only meant to illustrate that thirty or forty years ago the times were different, or were they?

    People often look back on there past lives and regret things. One oftern looks for excuses for the way things have turned out, how one’s dreams didn’t come true. Why didn’t they come true? Who is to blame? Could it be me, or was it my school, or my parent’s fault? Was it that person I loved who treated me like dirt and ruined my life? People’s paths cross, especially when they are young, they uncross too, then suddenly one sees that someone one knew has had a far better life, how did that happen? Isn’t it terribly unfair? Why them and not me? I used to be so young and beautiful when I a nymph, and I was desired by everyone, now I’m forty, fat, and finished… who’s fault is that? It must be someone’s surely?

    This entire thing about historic sex crimes seems very problematic indeed, especially if there is no evidence or witnesses to back up the claims, but even the allegations are enought to ‘punish’ or destroy someone these days, ruin them financially, and that’s before there’s even a trial, let alone a conviction, and of course public figures involved in sex stories are what the media love, the more lurid the better, especially if children are involved in any way in the stories.

    Julian Assange has been regularly called a rapist in all the world’s media. Only a couple of weeks ago the Guardian wrote that two Swedish women had accused him of rape and sexual molestation. How many people know that this isn’t true? That the two women involved haven’t accused Assange of raping them and didn’t go to the Swedish police and complain that they’ed been raped by Julian Assange? Yet, this is what millions of people think, that’s what the Guardian wrote, so it must be true, no? If the Guardian’s journalists can get all this so wrong, what else about there coverage of the affair is wrong? I mean it’s not just an insignificant detail?

    This is what I mean about the similarity with witchtrials. A crime doesn’t have to have been committed, devils don’t exist and old crones don’t fly around on broomsticks; but it can still be believed and ‘true’ and have terrible consequences.

    Sorry this is so long, but I feel really frustrated that Roy Harper, of all people, has been subjected to this… witch-hunt, which is what I think it really is… though, knowing the kind of person he is, with his views, his artistic output, his lifestyle, his iconoclasm, his rebeliousness, perhaps he was also fated to be burned at the stake or crucified?

    1. You make a number of salient points. I think people are frightened to speak their mind. There are so many aspects to this. I will speak more when it is all over.
      Thanks for you comments.
      Best wishes Opher

      1. It’s odd that the CPS hasn’t complied, (as far as one knows, are they fishing for a deal behind the scenes, a ‘symbolic’ partial admission of guilt, for some minor offence, in return for a non-custodial sentence, thal’ll make everyone happy?) with the Judge’s ruling that they have two weeks to ask for a retrial on the remaining charges. Two weeks has passed. Does this mean the case is automatcially over because the CPS hasn’t complied with the Judge’s stipulation? This whole thing must be an absolute nightmare for Harper and his family. A few years of what amounts to psychological torture must take a toll on a guy of his age.

        I first saw Harper playing in Hyde Park at one of the free concerts there. I went with three schoolgirls from a very posh private school. They were dressed in the very best pre-Raphaelite, hippy princess clothes. It seems like only yesterday. Roy played those very long songs he wrote McGoohan’s Blues and I Hate the Whiteman. It was a revelation. It was a great day. We went back first-class on the train, at Padington, because one of the young ladies recognized her uncle sitting in the compartment on his own. He transpired he was a Tory MP. As we’d all taken LSD before we arrived in Hyde Park it was an odd and colourful day to say the least, and the contrast between Roy Harper’s songs, the highlight of the event for us, I thought Pink Floyd were a bit ‘tame’, and then sitting with this MP, who looked like he was covered in silver scales to me, was striking! her was the Whiteman waiting for us! Though, in private he was a charming man and not at all hateful. He was the kind of Tory who was purged by Thatcher’s Brownshirts, and today, given how far politics has lurched to the right, he’d almost be considered on the extreme left!

        So that beautiful song on the wonderful ‘Man and Myth’ ‘Time is Temporary’ always makes me think, what a lovely thing nostalgia can be, of those wonderful girls and the adventures we had that day in Hyde Park wandering around like characters in Alice in Wonderland.

      2. I think the situation is not whether the CPS have complied or not but whether there is a duty to announce what is going on. We don’t matter. They are a law unto themselves!
        I probably saw you there in Hyde Park. I went to all those! They started off with Roy compering and very few people and built into big monsters. I believe at the Stones, or was it Blind Faith, Roy was not even allowed on stage!

  6. The times seemed so different then… golly, that sounds like the start of a song! I was only fourteen, though tall for my age. Now, as the memories fade and the people leave the stage (more lyrics! I’ll have to impose a little discipline!) I’m wondering if those times, so brief, looking backwards through the lense, ever really happened at all? Where those wild and crazy girls I knew really like that, how I think I rember them, or is it just the warm glow of memories of the last of days of Summer?

    I was there too for Blind Faith and the Stones. I remember watching Marsha Hunt dressed in white leather, climbing a ladder to get a better view. I preferred Family at the Blind Faith thing and King Crimson at the Stones, or was it the other way around?

    Anyway, I hope this ghastly destructive farce, also know as a trial, ends soon and is resolved fairly. I think, at this stage of his life Roy Harper deserves more than this, this filth clinging to him like gore from a slaughterhouse. And all that, belated, recognition he was ‘rightly’ receiving for his songs and Man and Myth, has vanished, frightened off by terrible allegations about child sex abuse and rape. At his age does one have the strength to start again rebuilding ones reputation and career? I hope so. It would be nice to see him make a few more records and rage a bit more against the dying of the light, and resist the temptation to be turned into a ‘national treasure’ which sort of means one has become a harmless old uncle instead of the scourge of the times, and what times we live in, trapped within a nightmare.

    1. Another McGoohan’s Blues would be fitting! And yes Family were great and so were King Crimson. But those huge spectacle’s were nothing compared to the early days when there were a couple of hundred of us, a great vibe, optimism, and idealism and a real thought that we could create a better world.
      A lot of good things came out of it though and we have to build a positive zeitgeist.
      Let us hope Roy’s thing is resolved soon!

  7. I must admit I began to feel really uncomfortable with those huge outdoor monster rock concerts. I started to get the distinct impression that the multitudes were mostly clapping and cheering in direct proportion to the fame of the band onstage. It was getting out of proportion. I began to feel like there was a bit too much ‘Nurenberg’ over things for my tastes. Christ, I’m starting to sound like Roger Waters!

    Loads of people I know still have a very romantic attitude to those famous mega-festivals like Woodstock, which is probably because of the documentary, which if one pays attention, is mostly the climax of each acts set. Personally, I tell them to take a look at the film Monterey Pop which is far smaller and I think better than Woodstock.

    I’ve started to understand that what I was doing collecting all those records and listening to all that music was creating a kind of utopian island populated by all the people I invited to come and live there. I suppose it was harmless escapism and made growing up, if I ever managed it! a bit easier.

    I really hope Harper gets some good news soon. He looks like he needs some. It must be like having a great stone yoke weighing down on ones shoulders and still having to walk around and stand up straight.

    It’s been weeks since the Judge told the CPS to reply. Whatever happened to the deadline? Another trial means a new jury and starting over from the beginning. The expense for the state and Harper. It could easily last a couple of weeks too. Fortunately, he can’t be tried for the offences for which he was acquitted, which on balance means he’s ahead.

    I’m glad I’m not famous. I can’t imagine if some of my ex-girlfriends re-examined our relationships, and, in hindsight, radically changed their minds about what happened between us, putting a completely different interpretation on the context and actions involved. In theory it’s like moving the ‘goalposts’ years after the goal was scored and crying foul! It’s something like the retro-active withdrawing of consent for sexual acts and criminalizing behaviour using today’s standards, which, didn’t apply decades ago, which is both controversial and problematic.

    Still, all that’s a bit rarified, theoretical and academic, let’s just hope the poor guy gets some good news soon.

    1. There was a very special atmosphere back in the sixties. I tried to capture it in the liner notes I did for Roy’s Live at Les Cousins. There was a great optimism and opening up of awareness. There was a big social change coupled with a camararderie which I have not experienced since. The trouble was that it all became a fashion. What started off small and optimistic rapidly turned big and financial.
      Those early festivals were really social events where you would meet up with like-minded people and talk, interact and groove to a background of great music. The musicians and audience were part of the same thing. Then it became a performance and a spectacle and we weren’t included.
      I used to enjoy wandering backstage and talking to musicians. There were no barriers. Then it became an us and them and the Underground equality went out the window. We were back to being punters.
      I wish I could bottle that vibe. I wish I could go back and visit with my old eighteen year old self for a week.
      Roy badly needs some good news. The trouble is that they were told to make a decision but their is no onus on anyone to announce that decision. We made assumptions.

  8. So, if I understand correctly, the Judge tells the CPS that they have two weeks to decide whether to ask for a retrial or not, though, apparently, this doesn’t mean that’s a deadline, because no one is mandated to say what the decision is, publically, or inform Harper? Arcane, byzantine, or what? Talk about wheels within wheels! So one assumes, two weeks, and it’ll be over, hopefully, and then nothing apparently happens, how dreadful.

    Incidentally, you need to be extremely careful and circumspect, this probably doesn’t need saying; but, if you do talk to some journalist, from the Guardian or elsewhere, choose your words well and don’t get lulled into a sense of false security. If possible get any questions in writing before so you can think about your replies. If it’s an interview be absolutely clear what’s on the record and what istn’t. If it’s taped, get a copy, or better still make your own copy. Finally, don’t assume, that word again, that this guy is on your side or a friend.

    1. Yeah. I’ll tread carefully. I know what I want to say. I’ve got a lot of things I feel strongly about regarding the legal profession and system. We’ll see.

  9. That word ‘strongly’ worries me a bit, sorry to sound patronizing, but one needs to keep emotions out of this stuff, especially when speaking to the press. It’s best not to ‘feel strongly’ but speak cautiously and to the point. Remember, the journalist already knows the story he wants to write, the angle, before he talks to you. The facts are always fitted around the story, not the other way around.

    In the current political climate, with the various scandals involving the Establishment, leading towards paedophile rings in high places, where possible evidence and witnesses are covered by the Official Secrets Act, where children have been used as prostitutes and probably even murdered as the ulitmate sex-kick… the CPS needs to be seen to be doing something, for obvious reasons, to placate public opinion. Therefore, it’s easier to go after high-profile cases, with a lot of attendent publicity, that gives the impression that ‘no stone is being left unturned’ than targetting very powerful people, who if they were prosecuted and found guilty, might have national security implications, that means anything that underimines the credibility or legitimacy of the Establishment/State. In this context Harper is the perfect sacrificial lamb, or in his case old goat. Slaughter the old goat/Devil, in public, and everyone is ‘happy’. The law, trials, prosecutions, the reputations of Judges and the CPS, juries, don’t exist in some vacuum isolated from the rest of society and politics.

    In this context, and context is everything, the law, justice, bend, on the whole, to the times, which change. Who would have imagined that prisoners would have been held for fifteen years without a trial in Guantanomo, or that US citizens could be assassinated by their own government using drones and the President orders this.

    One can’t really blame the woman who accused Harper of sex-crimes. It’s the CPS that chose to pursue the case, after so many decades, that’s to blame. This case, in reality, doesn’t have much to do with what might or might not have happened between Harper and the woman/girl/child, they are almost details. The case is, I would contend, more about how the public perceive the CPS. One could, if one really wanted to be provocative, see it as a kind of ‘showtrial’ or a piece of legal theatre or even state propaganda. What should concern people, in the wider context, is that if the State/CPS can secure a guilty verdict on such flimsy evidence, with no witnesses and no concrete evidence of a crime even having been carried out, who then is safe? In theory anybody could be accused of anything and found guilty, if the story presented to the court is better told more convincing than the accused story, and this undermines our system of justice and the cornerstone, the presumption of innocence. Sexcrime accusations seem to shift the balance away from the presumption of innocence, because some crimes seem so terrible, ones involving sex and children, that even the accusation itself is taken as a proof of guilt by itself, before a trial, as people think, there’s no smoke without fire and the truth must lie somewhere imbetween; so one is ‘half-guilty’ already. Which is disturbing to say the least.

    As a final aside, honest! One has to wonder if Harper hadn’t been a minor celebrity with a radical reputation and a 60’s rock ‘n’ roll, counter-culture lifestyle, whether this case would have been pursued by the CPS with the same zeal, given the pressure on their resources? If he was Roy Harper the local plumber and not Roy Harper musician? There seems to be a link between the celebrity status of the accused and historic sex crimes prosecutions. How many totally unknown individuals have been charged with historic sex-crimes over the last few years, if at all?

  10. Yeah, we’ll see. But when? How long can they drag out this ‘torture’? It seems unecessarily cruel almost a form of punishment without the tiresoem necessity of having to wait for a conviction. It must be hell on earth for Roy and his family, and friends. I know this whole thing has made me feel very miserable too.

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